The invention relates to a reinforcing profile for a vehicle supporting frame, which connects at their bases two pillars of the vehicle supporting frame, in particular the C-pillars or D-pillars, as a vehicle transverse wall and at its ends formed as pillar connection zones merges via rounded corner reinforcements into the pillars.
In modern vehicle construction a rigid vehicle structure is fundamentally important for the driving properties and the crash safety of a vehicle. A suitable measure for achieving increased rigidity is to additionally brace the vehicle supporting frame by fitting, oriented transversely to the direction of travel, reinforcing profiles as vehicle transverse walls.
Reinforcing profiles of this type are known from practice. One such known reinforcing profile comprises a shell component constructed as a top hat profile which, in the fitted state, connects the supporting pillars at their bases and in the process is welded to the base panel. To make possible improved support of the pillars on the profile and at the same time a more uniform force progression in the structure, the reinforcing profile is supplemented by additional rounded corner reinforcements which encompass the profile at the corners formed by a respective pillar and a profile end as well as the respective pillar, and are secured thereto by welding. As a result of the rounded shape of the corner reinforcements the above-located horizontal outer surface of the top hat profile uniformly merges into the lateral surface of the pillar facing the reinforcing profile, from which the desired uniform course progression results. The corner reinforcements are also formed by shell components, each corner reinforcement usually comprising two parts for reshaping engineering reasons. As a consequence, in addition to the actual top hat-shaped shell component connecting the pillars, four further parts are required, that are to be connected to each other in pairs and to a pillar or the profile in order to produce a reinforcing profile for connecting two pillars with a sufficient supporting function. High costs both for the single-part production and for assembling the parts are associated with the large number of different parts. In addition, varying of the reinforcing profile dimensions is only possible with considerable expenditure as for this purpose newly configured tools have to be provided in each case for the component parts. Finally, the high number of welded joints, as a result of the construction, has an adverse effect, in particular when using higher strength steel materials as the base material as these are a lot less rigid compared with the base material and therefore constitute a factor that reduces the fatigue strength of the construction.